We are not ready for the influenza pandemic

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

31. The very best book about the 1918 flu

is The Great Influenza by John Barry. It's not only about that epidemic but about how doctors were educated in this country.

Several things to keep in mind about the 1918 epidemic.
1. It probably originated in this country.
2. Many of those who first contracted it were young soldiers who had literally never been off the farm they'd grown up on, and therefore had almost no immunity to anything.
3. Despite what doctors kept on telling Woodrow Wilson and the War Department, they insisted on continuing to send infected soldiers on crowded troop ships to Europe, absolutely guaranteeing the spread of the disease.
4. The best doctors had been drafted into the army. The ones left behind weren't very good for the most part. Some of them didn't understand the germ theory of disease.
5. Running water was a scarce commodity in many places. Regular hand-washing, the single biggest and best public health measure, wasn't very common. That means that most people weren't washing their hands regularly, didn't always understand how things like influenza were passed, and therefore couldn't take effective measures against its spread.
6. The main reason old people didn't die or even get the flu was that about 50 years earlier an epidemic of a similar flu type had occurred. The old people had either gotten it and recovered and were now immune, or were immune in the first place.
7. The sad and terrible reason young people died in such great numbers and died so swiftly was that their bodies mounted a fierce defense against the virus, and that very defense killed them.

Read the book. It's fascinating.